Disclaimer: Hellsing is owned by Hirano Kouta. All licenses belong to the
proper people. This is used without permission. The Shadow was created by
Walter Gibson. All licenses and rights belong to the proper people. This is
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from the author.

Chapter 9: Sparring

Sinister laughter filled the room.

This was why Integra hated these early evening sparring sessions, and why they
had been discontinued for so long until her return from the military prison
where she was incarcerated.

They always started with Alucard and herself going to the manor's hothouse,
where the vampire picked a blooming red rose, whereupon he would pin it to the
breast of his coat on the upper left where his aorta was located. When she was
younger, she had asked the red-coated nosferatu what the reason was for that
and Alucard smirked and told her a long involved story about an undead prince,
the prince's mild-mannered witch-sister, and about duels involving roses. Of
course, it ended with Alucard slaughtering them both, but that was how Alucard's
stories always ended: blood, gore, and the total destruction of everyone else
except for him. In Integra's opinion, now that she had grown older and wiser
in the vampire's ways, the story, like most of the oathbound vampire's stories,
was another total fabrication. Upside down castles in the sky, miraculous duels,
a wall of swords, a platform in midair: all cribbed from some fairy tale or
the other and sewed into a seemingly factual account of an adventure by a centuries-old
psychotic and told with the matter-of-fact tone that gave it a veneer of truth.
Baron Munchhausen would be a no-account liar compared against the Hellsing vampire
and his talent for untruth.

A pathological liar he might be, but Alucard did have a few honest bones in
his body, which was the reason why the monster and the monster's mistress, dressed
in a light leather sparring outfit that made her sweat profusely, were in a
private sparring room inside the mansion.

Another stinging laugh and Integra felt a rush of wind across her face. Alucard's
enruned white glove pinched her cheek in the manner that she had always hated
since she was little, and her mother's rose-red tulwar flashed a scarlet arc.
Too late. The gloved hand was away and the vampire was skipping backwards with
an amused, fanged smile.

Integra ground her teeth together and held Bhiima, shortened from the tulwar's
proper full name of Bhiima Rakta Paatalaam — the nomenclature owing to
the strange red metal that was used in its forging — in her right hand,
parallel to the ground, while her left hand held another one of her mother's
weapons, a vajrakali with the auspicious name of Saudaaminii, in an overhead
grip.

When she was younger, and before her mother's illness, Integra had learned
the basics of her mother's own personal martial art: a mix of various combat
styles found in the Indian subcontinent melded into a wholly unique dance of
death. One of the few things that the current leader of Hellsing regretted was
that she never got beyond the basics that were taught to her. Of the arsenal
of weapons that her mother wielded, she could only wield six with reasonable
skill: the tulwar, the vajrakali, the khanda, the katar, the kirpan and the
chakram. When her mother died, the development of her skills had stalled at
the level she had been taught, roughly one-fourth of her mother's ability. The
only thing she was able to do was to refine her skills to the point they were
now, with the occasional help of Walter and, when she was younger, the regular
sessions with Alucard.

Alucard laughed mockingly another time, and Integra lunged in with a sweeping
slash which the vampire only danced away from. A pinch on her buttocks elicited
an incensed screech from the blonde to which her vampiric charge only laughed.

Integra gritted her teeth and reminded herself of why she was doing this.
Alucard had insisted on similar sparring sessions like this when she was younger
but had relented when after one particularly intense workout, his young charge
broke down and cried, afterwards locking herself in her room until Walter
had convinced her to reenter society with the bribe of a plate of his chocolate
chip cookies and the assurance that Alucard wouldn't force her to participate
in such exercises again.

Now, here she was, a decade later, being teased and harassed in the same
awful manner by her vampiric servant, all in the hope of releasing the most
potent weapon in the arsenal of the Helsing family: the Fury.

The Fury, as Alucard had explained to her when she was little, was part of
the strange heritage that the Helsing family shared with the Van Helsings, the
original clan of vampire hunters from which the Helsings of old came from. This
legacy of the Van Helsing stock gave them the capability to stand toe-to-toe
against many supernatural threats that plagued the world of men, giving them
the speed, strength and the reflexes to combat those evils that would prey upon
mankind.

The vampire related all of this to young wide-eyed Integra, painting alongside
it the vast, labyrinthine story of the House of Van Helsing, a tale told with
what the his mistress assumed was the closest thing that the insouciant vampire
could muster to actual respect. He told of how the first of the Van Helsings
came to be: a royal decree by a long-forgotten king of the Hyborian Age by the
name of Conan, and a gift from an undead sage by the name of Epimetrius, giving
the Eolsing tribe of the Vanir great powers to match a coming evil and to combat
the secret forces that preyed on mankind.

In time, they were called the Vanir Eolsing, the distinctive azure blue eyes
and the wild blond hair becoming synonymous with the never-ending fight against
the forces of Darkness. Their name changed through the ages into what it was
now: Van Helsing.

Alucard spoke to Integra of many things on that strange long-ago afternoon
in her youth. Of battles and manipulations, of romance and tragedy, of betrayal
and loyalty, of the thousand myriad things that made the Van Helsings both the
perfect representation of humanity and its perfect defenders. Never had Integra
trusted her vampiric charge more than on that afternoon, knowing in some peculiar
way that the No-Life King was telling the whole truth.

That was why she was here, with her below-par weapon skills and her oh-so-mortal
frame, trying to catch a vampire with reflexes of greased lightning: to recapture
the sense that she was who she was, the last of the Helsings and, in some sense,
the last of the Van Helsings also, those distant, strange, heroic figures of
Alucard's tale. Her recent failures were still fresh in her mind, and she needed
something to prove to herself that she was deserving of such a heritage that
Alucard had described.

If she couldn't call it up, if she couldn't unleash that part of her blood,
she had no right calling herself by the name.

Alucard grinned broadly and Integra could swear that the nosferatu was reading
her mind, if she hadn't known that the binds set over her charge limited their
ability to affect any of her family. She dervish-twirled, thrusting the vajrakali
in a sideway sweep which turned into a feint, revealing Bhiima's upward slash
as the true attack. Fading away like a ghost, Alucard laughed again.

Then he smiled and Integra recognized that smile. She steeled herself for what
was to come.

"You really have to work on the swordwork, Mistress." The sly serpentine
tone was enough to insult any woman, but Integra had taken worse ridicule before.
But she knew that the vampire was only building up steam and more was to come.

Integra was quite right in her assumption as Alucard began a long, winding
tirade of her all her failings as a Helsing, a woman, and as head of the Hellsing
organization. The vampire had obviously long years of practice as he dissected
his mistress' character and rubbed into her face her many perceived flaws.

It was nothing new to Integra — she had heard it often enough in the
whispers behind her back — but it was always hard to hear it from Alucard
even if she knew that he didn't mean it. He and Walter had become sort of surrogate
parental figures to her since the death of her father. Their high opinion had
become a sort of a goal for her ever since the two had become her erstwhile
guardians.

A barb about her frigidness disturbed her line of thought and Integra lunged
with an atypical thrust of the tulwar. Alucard danced backward with a flowing
gracefulness reminiscent of a snake.

Integra smiled when she noticed that had managed to back her undead charge
to the rough stone wall. She twirled again, a bladed cyclone of arms and legs
seeking to claim the rose as a prize.

Alucard only laughed and launched himself upwards in the air, twirling in
a mid-air somersault. He landed with catlike deftness, swiftly turning around
to put a finger at the back of his mistress' neck. Integra stiffened, knowing
that, if this had been a serious battle against a vampire, one finger's preternatural
strength was often enough to kill a mortal.

That was when she felt something rising up in the back of her mind. The rage
was building up, climbing the mountain of her consciousness like a train cresting
a hill. All it needed was a little push.

"Really, mistress, your mother should have died a lot earlier if this
was all she could teach you."

Integra could literally feel Alucard's smile as the remark caught
her unprepared. This was new. Alucard always insulted her alone,
never the family. Then, she felt the emotional response to the remark
hit her like a bullet.

That did it. Integra felt it fall over her like a metaphysical
waterfall, a momentary realization of rightness that was inappropriate
with the emotion that followed: ice cold rage.

The world shifted into that new-familiar tinge of cerulean blue, rage and anger
consuming her mind like an avalanche. Everything seemed to move in slow motion
as she turned with painful slowness to face Alucard. His razor-blade smile was
positively gloating as he shifted his stance into something remotely resembling
a ready position in contrast to his earlier lackadaisical form.

Integra charged forward with a slash, a stroke which the vampire only narrowly
avoided with a well-timed dodge. This, however, left him slightly unbalanced,
an advantage that Integra exploited. Saudaminii slammed into Alucard's side
with the all the force she could muster, the vajrakali quickly withdrawn in
the style of a cobra strike. Blood erupted from the wound for a few moments
before vampiric regenerative powers sealed the hole in his side.

The No-Life King just grinned as he moved close into Integra's reach. The blonde
only leaped backwards, the wall becoming no obstacle as it was turned into a
springboard for Integra's acrobatic leap, a twin to Alucard's earlier feat.
The bluish tinge to her sight gave everything an ethereal quality as she floated
in the air. Sending her weight forward, she twisted and landed on both feet,
the jarring sensation galvanizing her as her body went into action.

She twisted into a backward roll, coming out of it with a slash aimed at
the red rose at Alucard's chest. However he slapped the blade away before
it could even touch the petals of the blossom. The vajrakali swept in from
above.

This time the vampire caught and grasped her elbow and Integra felt a spasm
that ran up her arm, forcing her hand to convulse, dropping the ancient blade
to the ground. She responded with a rising crescent kick that smashed into Alucard's
chin, that surprising enough forced him to let go. Her vampiric charge usually
shrugged away physical blows like they were nothing, but it seemed this time
he was actually feeling them.

Integra kept up her assault, the blue-tinged slow motion panorama that was
her vision making it easy to match Alucard's moves. A hand reaching for her
face was knocked away with a slap of her free hand. A dodge was curtailed with
a sudden change of direction. An attempt at an aerial escape was forestalled
when the last scion of the Helsing family caught the vampire's leg in midair
and slammed him to the solid stone floor with a resounding thud.

Alucard was silent now, but the incongruous smile on his face combined with
the look of pride — strange to receive such regard from her charge —
that he bestowed on her was enough to tell Integra of the vampire's feelings.
Still, the rage persisted. Now it was under her control, the icy feel of it
a coldness in the back of her mind.

The battle continued, Alucard successfully eluding Integra's attacks on the
rose while the blonde did her best to destroy the red blossom.

It ended when Integra twirled again, a cyclone of force, feinted with the
crimson-rose blade of Bhiima and suddenly swept Alucard's legs out from under
him. Her leg felt like it had crashed into a rod of iron, but the force behind
the sweep was strong enough to send the vampire sprawling.

Integra came out of the swirl and lunged downward, only to stare down the barrel
of a gun and two blazing red eyes. She halted and the two of them presented
a strange tableau: Alucard's red-coated form on the floor, one elbow propping
him up and the other hand aiming his Jackal at her; she, sweaty and bedraggled,
her long blonde hair wild and free, holding the scarlet-edged Bhiima in a downward
thrusting pose at Alucard's chest with one hand on the round pommel.

Then, after moments of tense silence, and Alucard broke the silence with
an amused chuckle. Until then, Integra hadn't noticed that her vision has
returned to normal. Her vampiric charge lowered his gun to show to her the
reason for his mirth.

The only thing that was left of the rose on Alucard's chest was the central
bud. All of the other petals had been shorn off in the course of their struggle.
Integra could only blink in surprise. Her vampiric charge only laughed harder,
which was suddenly accompanied by polite clapping from the side of the chamber.

The last Helsing turned to see Walter, who was smiling proudly at her, and
Ceres, an expression of awe on her face, clapping in admiration. She glanced
around and saw that all around herself and Alucard were the missing rose petals.

Her vampiric charge had by then stood up and picked one of the fallen pieces
of the flower and presented her one of them, his smile telling her to look
at her handiwork.

Integra gazed at the sliced petal that Alucard presented to her, so like
a drop of blood on the white-gloved hand. The cut was clean, so clean and
strangely familiar. Then it hit her where she had seen a similar slice, going
back to an afternoon of her childhood when Alucard had deigned to show her
one of his vampiric talents.

"A wind slice?" Integra picked the petal out of Alucard's hand,
looking closely at the near invisible results of air slicing through plant
matter.

"Wind slice. I couldn't have done better." Alucard's voice had a
strangely fatherly tone to it that Integra found as surprising as the result
of the evening's efforts. She could only gaze in wonder at the petal she held
in her fingers.

"Congratulations, milady," Walter broke in and Integra turned to
see that he and Ceres had walked up to them in the intervening silence.

"That was great, Integra! I didn't think anyone could move that fast."
Ceres gushed, to which Alucard just shrugged with a slightly offended air. Ceres
noticed and blushed. "Well, anyone human…."

Ignoring the byplay between her two vampiric charges, Integra turned to the
cadaverous butler. "How long have you two been watching? And what, in
Heaven's name, are you two doing here?"

Walter smiled thinly and gestured to the Ceres, who Integra finally noticed
was wearing what looked like a heavy metal gauntlets with heavy steel chains
that emanated from the tips of the chrome fingers. She also noticed that the
young vampire was wearing a rather tight leather sparring outfit similar to
her own, though the undead blonde filled out the costume in rather distracting
ways. Quickly squelching that line of thought she turned to the butler who
was explaining himself.

"Mistress Victoria and I have been sparring for several weeks now. She's
strong, fast and has developed the killer instinct that makes her worthy of
teaching her my skills. It makes my task in finding a successor much easier
and I also do not have to worry about her loyalty. Besides, she's managed to
figure out the basics quite easily and is very good with her fingers."

Finding out Ceres was "very good with her fingers" while the latter
was dressed in an ill-fitting, low-cut costume similar to a dominatrix was not
exactly helping Integra's concentration — concentration which was slightly
failing as her eyes seemed to drift of their own volition to look at the blonde
vampire, who was posed in a rather disturbingly erotic manner, one hand on her
hip and her rather buxom bosom threatening to spill out. The undead woman was
also not helping by smiling that way.

"Couldn't you have found her a more… Couldn't you have found her
an outfit that fits her better? Look at her, Walter, she looks like… like…."

Integra was saved from mentioning synonyms to the words "slut", "whore"
and "a meal good enough to eat" by Walter interrupting. "I've
already contacted the clothiers and they are already creating something more
suited to Mistress Victoria's proportions. I must apologize for her, of course,
in using your old sparring outfit. No worries, milady. Her sparring costume
should be ready by next week."

Integra vowed to herself not to spar with Alucard until the next week was safely
over and allowed herself to look at Ceres with a smile. The expression "too
cute for words" flashed through her mind as the young vampire flashed her a
smile.

"Now, excuse us, milady, but Alucard and myself have something to discuss
privately. Would you mind waiting for awhile with Mistress Victoria?"

The only reason that Integra did not scream "What?!" was her excellent self-control
and the fact that Ceres would probably misinterpret her outburst.

"Of course. Though I think you two should stay; I'll have to go to the
changing room. Ceres can accompany me." Integra's inner self was pummeling
its head against an imaginary wall as the words left her mouth. Did I just
say that Ceres could join me in the changing room, with me getting undressed?
Am I insane?

"Great!" Ceres chirped. "I had something to ask Integra anyway."

Integra was conscious of Walter and Alucard sharing her strange look at the
chipper young undead woman, a look to which the blonde vampire was oblivious.
She shook her head. Better go now and get it over with. The warm thought of
Ceres watching her undress was squelched under her iron will.

She turned to look at her two erstwhile guardians with a jaundiced eye. Walter
treated Alucard differently than herself. Where she treated the No-Life King
with a half-trust, half-wariness that which one would reserve to your favorite
crazy old uncle, who you hid when company was coming, the butler considered
the vampire as a respected part of the family. Maybe it stemmed from their shared
experiences in the World War; Integra never could figure it out.

No matter. She could trust the both of them to do what was best for her and
for Hellsing.

"Well, come on, Ceres. My sweat's drying on the leather and I find that
it usually ruins the leather if you leave it on for too long."

Integra, with Ceres in tow, left the room proceeding to the changing room.
They had closed the door to the sparring chamber when Integra brought up Ceres'
question.

"So what did you want to ask me about?"

The two were now walking down the corridor that led to the shower/changing
room that had been installed there for the use of those who practiced in the
chamber.

"Well, I was going to suggest going shopping again."

Integra congratulated herself on not tripping up from surprise as she furiously
tried to concoct an excuse to avoid the threatened shopping trip. Not that
the last time was bad, but because it made her a bit uncomfortable to be close
to her underling in various states of undress, like the upcoming changing
room.

Ceres, thankfully, was ignorant of her state of mind and continued with her
spiel. "It's been pretty quiet lately and I thought we could go again.
I mean, what's the worst that could happen while we're away?"